Posted on 08/09/2017 9:29:14 AM PDT by Swordmaker
An unfamiliar number appears on your cellphone. It’s from your area code, so you answer it, thinking it might be important,” Christopher Mele writes for The New York Times. “There is an unnatural pause after you say hello, and what follows is a recording telling you how you can reduce your credit card interest rates or electric bill or prescription drug costs or any of a number of other sales pitches. Another day, another irritating robocall. If it feels as if your cellphone has increasingly been flooded with them, you’re right.”
“In a Robocall Strike Force Report in October, the Federal Communications Commission said telemarketing calls were the No. 1 consumer complaint,” Mele writes. “The most simple and effective remedy is to not answer numbers you don’t know.”
“List your phones on the National Do Not Call Registry. If your number is on the registry and you do get unwanted calls, report them,” Mele writes. “Download apps such as Truecaller, RoboKiller, Mr. Number, Nomorobo and Hiya, which will block the calls… And then there is the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, which turns the tables on telemarketers. This program allows a customer to put the phone on mute and patch telemarketing calls to a robot, which understands speech patterns and inflections and works to keep the caller engaged.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Read the full article. The National Do Not Call Registry is certainly not a panacea. These unsolicited calls are an insidious problem and the lengths to which some of these scammers go (don’t say the word “yes” or they’ll use it to bill you) is criminal!
The MOST IMPORTANT ADVICE in this article is to NEVER say "Yes" to any question including "is this So-and-so" when they call. All they need is your voice saying the word "Yes" and they can paste it into an agreement to pay or agreeing to a contract for ongoing charges for anything. This happened with an employee in my office. . . resulting in thousands of dollars in charges. The scammers, when challenged, claimed they had a recorded agreement to their contract. The saving grace for us was that the employee was not authorized to contract for the corporation.
The Do Not Call Registry is worthless.
Best advise is to not answer the phone when you don’t know whose calling. Anything important, they will leave a message, IMO.
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I have been deluged by “Medicare advisors” since I got near my 65th birthday.
I let my dog talk to them....
The registry is total garbage, and reporting the calls is useless.
I noticed this trend (Using my area code and prefix) late last year. My solution is pretty simple. If I answer the phone and there is the slightest pause, I hang up. If it is a real person they will try to call back.
If I don’t answer, if it is a real person and it is important, they’ll leave a message or try to call back. But pretty much everyone I know in my area code is in my phone with a name attached. No name attached is a dead giveaway.
The whole thing is sort of comic relief to me.
+60 20
Malyasia
+1 (500) 2
Romania
Obviously not legitimate numbers. When I answer I get a recording in a heavy foreign accent directing me to some "Internet Pharmacy" website.
1. Never answer calls from numbers you don’t KNOW
2. If you do answer calls from numbers you don’t KNOW don’t answer by giving your name
3. If they ask for you by name never, never, never say that you are who they are calling for without knowing EXACTLY who is calling and what they want.
The advice to NEVER say YES to any question is also very good advice.
If you don’t answer robo calls they will eventually conclude yours is not a working number and give up on you for at least awhile.
The FTC - yet another federal alphabet agency and parent of the Do Not Call registry - is equally worthless.
Robodialers and spoofed caller IDs make it a two-front war. In addition, the robocallers are often using your local area code to convince you that maybe, just maybe, it’s a legitimate call. But it’s not.
For iPhone (and landlines) the Nomorobo app and service is well worth the $2 per month. It compiles and updates a list of junk callers and/or spoofed numbers and identifies same when the call rings. It’s a bit of a pain to regularly open the app to allow it to update.
Robodialers’ volume of calls becomes a Chinese finger trap for them - since they make so many calls in such a short space of time they can’t avoid identifying themselves as spammers. Some people demand perfection from Nomorobo but an 80-90% reduction is certainly acceptable.
Philosophical types always tell us that if robocalls didn’t make money they would stop tomorrow but have any of us ever met someone who agreed to pay money to a total stranger with an accent who randomly called?
Who picks up calls from un-recognized numbers ?
My mother in law.
On iPhones you don’t need an app. You can click the “I ball” logo in the right of the number to get the callers info and then scroll down and click on block this closer.
Yeah the spoofers will use random numbers but they can’t be currently assigned and eventually you’ll be blocking their current number list.
The latest version of this happened to me for the first time yesterday. I’ve been getting random calls that I don’t answer from my area code followed by the prefix 477 and 4 random digits. I ignore the calls, of course, but yesterday I actually got a message placed in my “Reminders” folder to call one of those numbers. Obviously I didn’t put it there, so they’ve figured out a new way of invading my privacy.
The scammers are changing the game. Not a good sign.
I do not understand why the following has not been programmed as part of these apps—simply enable the user to block the entire area code. That solves the problem of changing the last four digits.
Nomorobo.com. After signing up if a robo call your phone rings once and gets forward to no mans land. I’ve had it for several years and love it.
And it’s free
“List your phones on the National Do Not Call Registry. If your number is on the registry and you do get unwanted calls, report them,”
This is so much horse $hit! I’ve actually sent the FCC copies of Faxes that came in on a Do Not Call line together with info from a telecon I made to the telemarketer who sent them. After a YEAR, I got a letter from the FCC saying that they were unable to help.
So here’s my solution: On our wireline phone (where it’s a bitch to block calls courtesy of AT&T’s effed up system) we simply have a recording saying: “ Due to the high incidence of unwanted telemarketing calls, we do not answer this phone, ever. If you are a friend and wish to reach us, leave a message and we will return your call!”
On cell phones, just let them ring and then do the “block this contact” number on the offending number. Right now, I have more “blocked contacts” on my iPhone than I have normal contacts.
Finally, I wrote to the Chairman of the FCC and found that he was no longer a member. I got his number from the FCC website. The new Chairman is a guy by the name of Agit Pai. Drop him a note telling him to $hit or get off the pot with respect to telemarketers, I did, and I didn’t mince any words in doing it.
MrNumber spam call blocked on App Store- also easy to look up who is calling.
Robocall avoidance advice, links, numbers ... PING!
Thanks to Swordmaker for the ping!!
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